Cancer vaccine testing gets green light

CARLSBAD -- CancerVax Corp. said Monday it got approval to
continue testing a cancer vaccine for patients with advanced
melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer.

The Carlsbad-based biotech company is in a Phase III trial of
the cancer vaccine, named Canvaxin. Phase III testing determines a
drug's safety and effectiveness. If successful, the trial is
usually followed by an application to the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration to begin selling the drug.

Shares of CancerVax closed Monday at $11.98 per share, down 27
cents for the day.

The approval came from the Data and Safety Monitoring Board, an
independent panel of medical experts that is overseeing the
trial.

The board could also have recommended changing the trial or
ending it early due to obvious success. In this case, the board
decided that no change was needed, and that running the trial to
completion is reasonably likely to determine if Canvaxin is
effective. Moreover, the board determined there was no unexpected
or serious bad effects from Canvaxin that justified stopping the
trial.

CancerVax has enrolled 842 out of a planned 1,118 patients in
the trial, and estimates patient enrollment will be completed this
year.

Canvaxin is a new kind of vaccine designed to stimulate the
body's disease-fighting immune system. It's made from whole cancer
cells, irradiated so they can't reproduce. The cells make about 40
antigens, which are proteins that provoke an immune response. These
antigens appear to be associated with certain types of cancer
cells.

The vaccine is injected into the patient. Since these cells are
not the patient's, they are attacked by the immune system as
foreign invaders. The expectation is that the immune system will
associate the antigens with invading cells, so it will then attack
the patient's own cancer cells.